Ranting here, but about an absolute piece of trash research, fit only for toilet paper. Here is a study, graph below, that our old buddy Andy Slavitt is tweeting about saying here is clear “cause and effect”. I have to tell you, I don’t think Andy is stupid, but he must have absolutely zero knowledge of either experimental design or statistics. Or he has been wearing his mask so long, the supply of oxygen to his brain is diminished. He knows the Danish study will get out, and he knows his shot at HHS is disappearing rapidly as Biden fades faster than the oil industry will, so desperation is setting in quickly. (Andy has more money than Biden, though (I think, who knows for sure how much Joe has collected over the years) so Andy will be fine.) This was published in the Washington Post, which wouldn’t know science from shinola.
I would guess all of you can imagine what is wrong with the study just by looking at the chart. Look at the endpoint, the thing supposedly affected by mask-wearing. Percent of people who know someone with CV-19? Seriously, that is an endpoint? But it gets better, guess where they got that percent, and the percent of people who say they wear masks all the time in public. From Facebook. Now there is a rigorously selected and representative sample. But you always have to be asking yourself when you look at research, why were the endpoints picked and what alternatives were there. Here, the alternatives would be actual cases, especially if adjusted for testing levels, hospitalizations even better or deaths. This one reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven, when George Clooney says, “I know a guy who knows someone who can talk to people” or something to that effect. Very scientific. Trash, Trash, Trash.
But this study gets taken seriously by the media and by the hysterics like Mr. Slavitt. It is truly a joke, but the public is the punched line.
And while I am ranting let me point another deceptive use of numbers going around right now. All of sudden people have decided to show “cases per hundred thousand of population”, instead of the actual number of cases reported a day. Why is that? It is because in the small population states where most of the case rise is right now, the numbers aren’t very big, so they switched to something that could look scarier in comparisons. When it was New York or Florida or Texas, we got raw numbers, now suddenly we get the new metric. Both are fine, but you can’t trust anything from the regular media, they regularly strategize on how to make things look as bad as possible.
Finally, the university that did the “research” for that dreadful graph, has on its website the data about mask wearing. The Twin Cities is near 100% and the rest of Minnesota is extremely high. So don’t give me any crap about the mask mandate would be working if people actually wore them. People wear them all the time here. I see that with my own eyes. Masks don’t f***ing work to significantly slow community transmission. Period. It is absolutely obvious to anyone who looks at anything as basic as Minnesota case trends. Makes no difference, or if you prefer, makes things worse!!
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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That really IS crap!! OF COURSE the WaPo loves it!!
I’ve been thinking that the reason so many people are good with wearing masks is as you imply, they’ve lost all judgment… ” Or he has been wearing his mask so long, the supply of oxygen to his brain is diminished. “
I think you might particularly appreciate today’s youtube podcast of Ron Paul today: “Is The New Covid ‘Surge’ All About The Election?”
Is Flatulence a symptom of Covid?
Am I to understand that 86% of Minnesotans wear masks all the time AND nevertheless 28% of Minnesotans know someone who has CV-19 symptoms when symptoms only last a few days and more than1/3 have no symptoms, and another 1/3 have symptoms so mild they are hardly noticed? There’s a race on to test everyone because no one seems to know if they have it.
Golly, you mean to tell me a bystander or relative or friend actually knows who is infected when no one knows unless they’re tested? Everyday.
Are they smart enough to tell the difference between seasonal influenza (now arriving), a cold, and Covid-19? What a joke!
With 86% wearing masks if there were any validity to masks as preventing transmission it would imply 86% of the Minnesota population would not get the disease in any event. Ergo, 86% not, plus another roughly 2/3 of population not, leaves a handful of Minnesotans getting ill. Wow, are we ever connected; many Minnesotans all know the same people who are infected at almost any point in time.
It gets still more preposterous if we subtract out the under 40 because they almost never get ill. Or under 50. Or under 60. You get it. 🙂
Then there’s good ‘ol South Dakota. They try their damnest to slam both Dakotas.
But, the truth is there’s hardly any cases but in all those small towns everyone knows everyone. Whereas in poor DC they pack ’em in, no one knows anyone, and many daily escape the city, returning home to people they know but seldom get it in distant residential areas.
The science I can see is that chart somewhat illustrates the exponential nature of the spread by geographic regions.
This is why we read your column and recommend it out regularly! The news is just plain trash and lies! My ten year old granddaughter can even figure the whole mask wearing crap out!
Figures don’t lie. But liars know how to figure.
86% compliance should show a positive result. But of course masks don’t and never will. It’s the lie of our times. Anti-science du jour. So many ways to show and prove masks don’t work. During the Spanish flu, San Francisco had a mask mandate but still did worse than cities without them like NYC, Boston and Philadelphia. But someone told me, ‘what if they’re right?’
This is what happens in a hysteria. ‘What if’ combined with fear form irrationalism.
The thing I want to know is what is it about masks that people so dearly want to work? Who are funding these studies?
Also. About the rise being tied to election, the only problem I see with this is they rose across Europe and Canada. Unless they’re in cahoots with the DNC, I think there’s more at play.
My cousin lives in Spain and he’s wondering the same too. Why are cases so high? Yes, testing is part of and I think the masks are also contributing but they’re way above what they were at the peak in spring. Or maybe Occam’s Razor suggests just that: It’s the testing dummy.
i think we need to cool it with the testing unless you show key symptoms.
A casedemic…and 3M funds Osterholm. Connect those dots.
Dell- you’re wrong, because I know a guy whose sister’s husband knows a woman whose father’s girlfriend’s son in law’s second cousin’s eighth grade teacher….